ors are variable but the
brilliancy is invariable.

Furthermore, the celebrated Old Lady of Banbury Cross, who boasted of
rings, on her fingers and bells on her toes, would find her glory
vanish in a twinkling should she visit India. Not content with these
preliminary beginnings of adornment, the barefooted Hindu woman
wears--if she can afford it--a band or two of anklets, bracelets
halfway from wrist to elbow, armlets beyond the elbow, ear-rings of
immense size, a necklace or two, toe-rings and a bejewelled nose-ring
as big around as a turnip. Sometimes the jewelry on a woman's feet
will rattle as she walks like the trace-chains on a plow-horse on the
way to the barn.

This barbaric display of jewelry, it should be said, is not made
solely for purposes of show. The truth is that the native has not
grown used to the idea of savings banks (although the government is
now gradually convincing him that the postal savings institutions are
safe), and when he earns a spare rupee he puts it into jewelry to
adorn the person of himself or {217} his wife. If all the idle
treasures which the poor of India now carry on their legs, arms, ears,
and noses were put into productive industry, a good deal might be done
to alleviate the misery for which the agitators profess to blame the
British Government.

Calcutta, India.

{218}

XXII

HINDU FARMING AND FARM LIFE

In the rural villages, of course, the majority of the inhabitants are
farmers, who fare afield each morning with their so-called plows or
other tools for aiding the growth of their crops. The Indian plow is,
I believe, the crudest I have found in any part of the wide world. It
consists of a simple handle with a knob at the top; a block of wood
with an iron spike in it about an inch thick at one end and tapering
to a point at the other; and a tongue to which the yoke of bullocks
are attached. The pointed spike is, perhaps, sixteen inches long, but
only a fraction of it projects from the wooden block into which it is
fastened, and the ordinary plowing consists only of scratching the two
or three inches of the soil's upper crust.

The Allabahad Exposition was designed mainly to interest the farmers
in better implements, and its Official Handbook, in calling attention
to the exhibit of improved plows, declared:

"The ordinary Indian plow is, for certain purposes, about as
inefficient as it could be. Strictly speaking it is not a plow at
all. It makes a t